A new survey has revealed that customer satisfaction has dropped to its lowest level since 2010.

GENERAL MERCHANDISE

Customer satisfaction reaches lowest point since 2010

16 January 2015 | by The Retail Bulletin

A new survey has revealed that customer satisfaction has dropped to its lowest level since 2010.

Based on the feedback from nearly 40,000 customer experiences, the 2015 UK Customer Satisfaction Index released by the Institute of Customer Service, shows that retailers John Lewis and Amazon topped the league table for customer satisfaction. Other retailers in the top ten included Ocado, Marks and Spencer (food), Waitrose, Argos and Aldi.

However, overall satisfaction was found to be now lower than at any point since January 2010 - only the utilities and banking sectors improved during 2014.

Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service, said: “Many organisations are struggling to keep pace with a business environment that has undergone rapid change in recent months. Some brands are improving customer satisfaction by operating in an agile and innovative way, but overall it is clear that a new approach is required for this new environment. Businesses need to take a look at the experience they are delivering to customers and identify how it can be improved.”

The institute said the research also reflects the dramatic changes in the retail food sector in recent months with retailers such as Lidl, Waitrose and Aldi improving their customer satisfaction scores while experiencing growth in sales and market share.

Looking at the overall results, customers felt that ‘speed and responsiveness’, ‘complaints handling’ and ‘staff behaviour’ had deteriorated most in the last two years. In addition, ‘outcome of the complaint’ and ‘on-time delivery’ were the only two of the survey's 28 metrics to show improvements since January 2013.

Age, socioeconomic group and region were also found to have an increasing impact on customer satisfaction. Younger people are on average were found to be less satisfied than their older counterparts and were more likely to recommend and use social media when they had a complaint. Customers from Wales were shown to be the most satisfied, followed by people in the North of England and Scotland. Meanwhile, people in the South East of England were the least satisfied.

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